S5:E3 - Spiritual Abuse Awareness Month: How Purity Culture Impacts Men - with Julia and Jeremiah from the Sexvangelicals
Julia and Jeremiah from the Sexvangelicals podcast (a podcast for providing the sex education the church didn’t want you to have) join Uncertain podcast to discuss how Purity Culture can impact men.
Some topics addressed in this episode:
Erectile Disfunction
Shame around sex
Sexual Agression
Gender Binaries
Check out two of the Sexvangelicals' episodes featuring Uncertain’s host Katherine Spearing:
Julia Postema and Jeremiah Gibson are the co-hosts of the podcast Sexvangelicals: The Sex Education the Church Didn't Want You to Have. They are both Boston-based licensed psychotherapists and certified sex therapists who work with clients in Massachusetts. They currently live in Utrecht, The Netherlands. They specialize in helping couples with negative religious backgrounds discover sexuality that works for their partnership. They enjoy traveling to places that tend to fly under the radar, long-distance hiking, cooking very spicy food, unexpected conversations, and introverted days filled with reading and drinking fancy tea.
Socials:
Instagram and Threads: @sexvangelicals
Website: www.sexvangelicals.com
Substack (Relationship 101): sexvangelicals.substack.com
Transcript is unedited for typos or misspellings
Katherine: [00:00:00] Hello. How are you?
Julia: Good. We're excited.
Katherine: Yes. It is morning where I am, or early, early, early afternoon, and then it is evening where you all are. I know. So, thanks for giving up your Saturday night.
I know you would. Probably normally be out wildly partying,
Jeremiah: right? Wildly. The wildest
Julia: of parties.
Katherine: You in the Netherlands.
Jeremiah: That's right. Hanging out with windmills and eating a bunch of cheese.
Julia: Today is Sinterklaas and so I have heard that it is a chaotic time to be out. So this is a good day to be inside.
We've got tea. It is raining outside. So this is actually a cozy and a Perfect way to send Saturday night. I love
Katherine: it. I am so excited to be able to talk to you. I love, I love y'all's podcast episodes. I have recommended them to, I mostly recommend them to friends of mine who are recently [00:01:00] divorced and first exploring.
All of the things that they were not allowed to explore pre evangelical marriage. And and so that's a, that's a recommendation y'all are a recommendation that I pass around to some folks. I love your intro. My favorite part about your, your. Podcast episode for listeners is how you, you kind of interview each other and chat like before your episodes, those, those are always really,
Jeremiah: yes, absolutely.
And we do talk about divorce a lot on our podcast. So, that is unfortunately a part of our story and, and, and how we've come into how we've come into recognizing the impact of purity culture on relationships, so. Is that a part
Katherine: of both of your stories?
Julia: It is. Yeah. We are both we are both divorced.
Katherine: All right. And then, did you all get into doing what you do as sex and relationship therapy post [00:02:00] evangelicalism? Our post? These experiences or was this something that came up before, were you already working in this?
Jeremiah:
So I, a little bit of both for me. So, I joke with people, except it's not a joke, that I did my first couples therapy session when I was 12.
And listeners, you can... Put some of the pieces together. I, so, so I've known for some time that that I wanted to be a couples therapist. Huh. And in the field of psychotherapy there's a specific license for marriage and family therapy.
My license is in marriage and family therapy. And a lot of the marriage and family therapy schools are either at these big kind of research schools. So Ohio state has a big program where Julia went Michigan state has one or they're at Christian schools because the history of couples therapy and marriage family [00:03:00] of the history of couples therapy.
The history of marriage therapy is pretty closely linked to the Christian community. In fact, our professional organization split in the seventies from the California organization because religious people, the, the pastors spiritual directors in the seventies said like, no, like what's happening in California is too liberal, is too progressive.
Let's, let's talk about marriage and let's talk about marriage from the perspective of heteronormativity. And this is. A little bit before James Dobson starts taking over with, with focus on the family, but, but, but it's all connected to that. So. So my graduate program at Abilene Christian University is a Christian university.
But interestingly, that was, I would say, probably the beginning of my deconstruction process too. Yeah. Because marriage and family therapy at its root is systems theory. So this idea that everything is interconnected you know, I can't succeed unless you [00:04:00] succeed. We, we talk about this through, through Desmond Tutu's work.
And so, so I actually begin realizing, oh, like the church, a lot of the Christian stuff, like, like, isn't really making sense. It's clashing with systems theory. The system stuff makes a lot more sense to me. It connects. The problem is that in my twenties, I am employed by churches. Yeah. I'm, I'm a music my first career is through music ministry.
And when I left Texas moved to Boston and very quickly get hired by a church to do music ministry. And so a lot of my thirties, then my early thirties is trying to figure out how to do a systems work. I later discovered sex therapy through, through my office. How to be a sexual health professional and to be a minister at the same time.
And I thought I could pull both of them off. The church that I was in worked at claimed to be really [00:05:00] progressive. At the end of the day, I ended up getting fired. I ended up talking about sex therapy too much, made the wrong people uncomfortable, and I get the axe. Oh no! So I end up getting kicked out of Christianity, more so than leaving and choosing not to return to organized religion.
Yeah, these
Katherine: two things are very connected in your story, like you're very much and your vocation and your deconstruction are, are very entwined.
Jeremiah: Absolutely.
Julia: Yeah. Minor entwined but in a different way. Catherine when we were interviewing you, you had mentioned something that I could relate to which is the socialization for women to be some sort of caretakers within.
fundamentalist, and other evangelical circles. Being a therapist is very much a nurturing type of career. The other career options I had considered were [00:06:00] teaching and nursing, also stereotypically nurturing, stereotypically associated with Christianity. So, I don't know if I would have become a therapist.
Had I not grown up in the environment that I did. What a question, right? Right! Ultimately, I love it most of the time, but sex therapy was deeply connected to my deconstruction process. I got married young, at the age of 22. I am divorced and when I got married my world crumbled because I had learned that getting married, getting married young was a rite of passage into adulthood, would be the sign of my worth as a human being, and would ultimately be the way that I could access the sexuality that had been denied to me.
And when I got married and I hated sex, when I got married and I didn't experience the desire from my husband that I was told would be [00:07:00] present all the time, because all men ever think about is sex, which I'm sure we'll come back to in this episode. My sense of identity shattered. My sense of identity was always in my purity as a woman, in my ability to perform my gender role, and in being a desirable person, particularly sexually.
So I became very distressed and my first years married were awful for me, even though I didn't understand exactly what was happening. Yeah. I did, two years after getting married, find a phenomenal sex therapist in Boston. I will always give Nancy McGrath a huge amount of credit for my individual and relational growth.
She was an amazing sex therapist, an amazing couples therapist. And my ex husband and I made a lot of progress, even though we did choose to get married. And just to get divorced. Yes. Yes. Even though my ex husband and I choose to got [00:08:00] divorced, choose to get divorced. And as I was continuing to grow, as I was continuing to heal, my therapist said, I was already a practicing therapist.
She said, if you decided to become a sex therapist, you would be a great sex therapist. And that was such an affirming and healing moment for me in my sex therapy training. I admitted to myself and my therapist for the first time that I didn't want to be married. And so sex therapy training was really like the last Jenga piece that caused the tower to shatter.
I wasn't an active member of a religious community when I participated in sex therapy training, but I still was. Connected to the religious world. And I was still married to my ex husband. And because I was married to a Christian man, I had status in my family system and I had status in all kinds of other systems.
And then I lost my status within my family. [00:09:00] I lost my status within my community. My divorce was fodder for gossip at a funeral and becoming a sex therapist and ultimately getting divorced was what broke my connection to that world.
Katherine: Woo! Goodness. Goodness. So this is somewhat of a rhetorical question that I know the answer to, but I still want to hear your answer.
How interconnected is sex? To personhood and relational dynamics itself. How often do you see that connection?
Jeremiah: Strongly. Strongly. Well, so, so there's two, two categories of that. In religious communities, absolutely strongly. We, we could talk maybe about the, the, the professional kind of non religious universal relationship about that later, but in the religious context very strongly,
Julia: yeah.
And I would say outside of religious contexts, [00:10:00] yes, but in a different way. So, when my, when I say that my sense of self crumbled after getting married, a big piece of that was sexuality. And so... I will sometimes have folks come to sex therapy in similar positions as me, and the couple might say something like, but it's just sex, and we still love each other, and I have a good life in all these kinds of ways, but it's not just sex for anyone.
Sex is never just sex for anyone, but especially if you grow up in an adverse or religiously abusive context, sex is actually everything. And I'm not joking when I say everything. So if you get married and sex is painful physically or emotionally or relationally, that can have massive consequences in all areas of your life.
Katherine: Right. Mm. So when you are a sex therapist and folks come to you for difficulties and [00:11:00] challenges within their sex life, very regularly, there's more happening and in their lives and in their relationships. Absolutely.
Jeremiah: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so there's a couple of things that, that come up one. Sex isn't talked about in a lot of, in a lot of couples, obviously it's not talked about at all in religious couples.
Sex with each other, like they don't talk about it. That's right, that's right. Yes, yes, the church talks a lot a lot about sex. But the church doesn't give partners the tools or the skills to be able to talk about sexuality with each other. And if they do it's almost exclusively from the perspective of quantity, meaning how much do you want to have it?
Yes. And from the perspective of performing gender roles where men are expected to have high volumes of sexual desire, interest, and women are expected to be asexual yet to conform to the, the needs of male partners.[00:12:00] The second way that, that this shows up is around just in, in general,, if a couple doesn't have the skills and resources to talk about sexuality, what else do they not have the skills and resources to talk about?
Katherine: Right.
Julia: Yeah. A whole lot of other things. That's right. Money, or child rearing, or household management. How to
Jeremiah: deal with families of origin. So a lot of stuff gets avoided, and there's a lot of conflict avoidance that we find. And the second thing is that for the couples who are able to talk about sex and sexuality, there's a lot of variance regarding sex.
Sex can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Culturally speaking, sex is often thought of as a euphemism for intercourse.
Julia: Vaginally penetrative intercourse. That is
Jeremiah: correct. Yes. But what Julia, you and I talk about is that there's a lot of different ways that bodies can connect.
Sometimes [00:13:00] involving a vaginal intercourse, sometimes not involving vaginal intercourse. Let's talk about all of it and let's talk about all of it from the perspective of like what kinds of touch do you want? And then also, how do you want that touch to happen? How do you, what do you need before your body gets the touch that it wants?
There's a lot of different variables that Julia, you and I talk about, and that's on an individual level. And in couple therapy, of course, there's two people. So the ways that I go about sex are going to be different Julie from the ways that you go about sex. And, and then the work is, is how do we then make how do we make arrangements?
How do we make agreements about? How to do sex, how to do anything, but for the sake of this conversation, how to do sex in a pleasurable, in a pleasurable way for both people. Yeah.
Katherine: Yeah. So many, I'm like, as y'all are talking, I'm like, question, question, question, question, question, question. I
Julia: know, that happens to me too.
I was telling Jeremiah after our interview with [00:14:00] you and we took a bathroom break, I was like, I had 20 more questions to ask for
Katherine: each episode. Well that just means that we have a podcasting relationship and we will do more episodes together in the future. This is the one, one, one, one interview I've already decided five minutes in.
One interview is not enough. But one of the things that I wanted to focus on for this specific, this specific episode there is so much, and this is even just for me personally so much, uploaded A literature right now about how purity culture impacts women and women in relationships and what that does to marriages and dating and recovery after purity culture.
I this is just, you know, a regular topic of conversation with my between myself and my peers. I was in a, I'm in a, like a [00:15:00] sort of deconstruction group. I call us the Renegades. And we met a couple Saturday nights ago and everyone's at different phases in their, their deconstruction.
They're also at different phases in their sexuality and their sexuality exploration. And I just asked them just like a very, like, simple question of like, what would have been different? If you had been raised with like the full gamut of the feast in front of you and like that was the class that you got in Sunday school, as opposed to don't have sex.
And then that's the end of it. And then also just for the subject of our conversation too, I asked them very specifically about what, so in evangelicalism, It's cisgender binaries of male and female, and you and there's no other category. And so I asked them very specifically, how did that impact you and this was all people who these are all [00:16:00] people who identify as, as, as female, and then how intricately connected that binary that gender binary is to this messaging.
And so a question for you all when you meet with couples that come out of evangelicalism, what role does that binary play? In your conversations and, and for good or ill.
Jeremiah: Sure. I'll start. And then I'm curious about how you'd answer that too. Again, a lot of folks coming out of evangelical systems don't have the relationship skills of the negotiation skills to figure out how to navigate one, how to navigate differences and to how to make decisions about a relationship based on their own preferences.
So in the absence of that, they rely on gender roles. They rely on the performance of gender roles to [00:17:00] create expectations for, say, how administration gets done, how sex gets done, how parenting gets done, and there's a lot of resentment that is, that is there because Even though these things, these positions were assumed there weren't overt conversations about how to how to enact these you know, women and men both, like, they, they don't make verbal agreements to each other in the, in these contexts about Well, hey as, as a female partner, I absolutely want to do this particular thing as a male partner.
I absolutely want to do these things. It's you should do these things. Yes. And any conversation that happens centers around the should. Like you
Katherine: should do these things, not I would prefer that I do. That's right. Okay. Right. Absolutely. So one of the
Jeremiah: things, Julia, you and I do with with regards to the binary is we do whatever we can to get rid of it.
Katherine: I love that.
Jeremiah: Yeah, [00:18:00] how would you answer that? I would
Julia: agree with that. I'm sure that I'll have more to say as Katherine keeps asking questions, but the first part is recognizing What we learned about gender and how that has then impacted the relationship and what are the structures and systems and patterns that the couple falls back to.
And if anyone has ever gone sledding in the winter, you know that once you've got a path that's slick, it's really hard to set a new path. So even if, like Jeremiah said, the gender roles are causing some resentment. I imagine that my ex husband probably developed some resentment around what gender role looked like for him.
I had my own resentment around what that looked like for me. We didn't get ahead of the resentment by talking about it and negotiating it until it was too late. And even though that wasn't working for either one of us, it [00:19:00] was like a very slick... path down a sledding hill. And if you want something different, you've got to take that sled, move it to a new part of the hill, put it in snow that hasn't been down, and you've got to do a lot of hard work to create a new path that works.
Katherine: Yes, absolutely. And it sounds like from both of your stories that sometimes that new path is a new relationship.
Julia: Yes.
Jeremiah: Sometimes. In our case, yes.
Julia: Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Sometimes it is a new relationship. Sometimes it is hard work with a current partner. And sometimes it is... Being a person who is partnered with multiple people or being a person who is dating and not partnered.
Mm-Hmm. So it can look all different kinds of ways. When we talk about our podcast having a relational bent what we mean is that we live in relationships with all kinds of people. Mm-Hmm. That might mean [00:20:00] starting a new path on a new hill and your family's on another hill and they're like, you abandoned us.
Katherine: What's going on? Yes. Yes. Absolutely. No, I love that. I love that. And that, that expands sexuality and relationships in general, because even, even if you have this dynamic within this couple, like our sexuality impacts how we interact with everyone. It's not just our intimate partner. And I've really enjoyed it.
My. deconstruction journey, learning about that because it just expands possibilities and, and just, it makes it just beautiful and vibrant. And like, there's so much here and, and so very sad and also very angry at how narrow. The teaching that I received was and how very specific and gendered it was and, so sad.
And then also just like, it's a [00:21:00] fucking lie. And yet. The we'll get in all of this, but just like the, the, the conservative agenda behind that lie and unpacking that as well. And, and having that just opportunity to grieve the opportunities that I was denied. And I know that's a part of me.
So many people's journeys of just like grieve, grieving this, this loss that happened. How did that play out for both of you?
Julia: The grief part or a different
Katherine: part? Great. Yeah. Just the grieving. If, if that was a part of your journey.
Jeremiah: Oh, I think it still is a part of our journey. Yeah. I think you and I both make reference.
I'm trying to remember the last time you and I both made references to our former partners. It's been within the last week. . And, and reflecting about the sadness of, of, of painful things that, that we received. Even painful things that we said missed [00:22:00] opportunities. Mm-Hmm. To to explore and, and to have conversations that, that we didn't get the chance to have.
Mm-Hmm. that the church didn't want us to have. Mm-Hmm. . So, yeah. Yeah, that comes up quite a bit. Yeah.
Julia: I I haven't even mentioned this to Jeremiah yet, but. Something that I say when I talk about getting divorced is that my ex husband is a really phenomenal human being. And I am, I am sad that the education neither of us received, probably to a large, large part, impacted our decision to get divorced.
I am rarely on social media because it is too overwhelming for me. However, I saw that my ex husband recently celebrated his two year anniversary to his new wife. And I imagine that he is an even better partner, probably, than he was with me. Not because he wasn't a good partner to me, [00:23:00] but because he has had life to grow and evolve and learn.
And... I am very happy that he is in a partnership that seems to be really beautiful for him. And I am still, I'm still really sad. I'm sad that that relationship ended. I'm sad about the ways that I contributed to hurt. I am sad about the ways that I was hurt. And I know that I will probably think about my ex spouse to some degree.
Daily or often for the rest of my life.
Katherine: Yeah. Yeah. Because it, it, it doesn't just go away. Deca, deconstructing and rewiring those sled paths. It's not just a, like a one and done thing. Right.
Jeremiah: Well, and it also happens while Julia, you and I are also figuring out our relationship and experiencing these really beautiful [00:24:00] moments that we have.
And. Kind of hashing out how we want to do different things. Grief doesn't happen in this, like, process where you take a pause from life and you go off and, and, and you grieve for an extended amount of time. Like, grief happens in the midst of these concurrent processes that, that are happening in a person's life.
And, and that, that makes it even more
Julia: challenging. Yeah. And I can't grieve the end of my marriage without ultimately grieving The systems that raised me, the systems that conditioned if conditioned early marriage, the systems that taught me about what dating and marriage looked like. So whenever I consider my ex husband, whenever I consider the pain or the joy that we experienced, I, I'm unable to separate that from the lack of relational and sexual health education.
From the religious systems in my life. Yes. [00:25:00] Yes.
Katherine: And how just so entwined those two things are and and just the reality of like those, those indentions in the snow are going to be so much more defined when it's coming from. religious space. This is what God wants from you. This is what requires from you.
And then everything in that system upholds that and supports it. And these things are very deeply embedded into us and is the soup that we swim in. And so I'm really excited to just get into some practical stuff and maybe provide a little bit of a resource for folks. I would like to concentrate our our conversation on specifically.
How purity culture impacts men in, in these relationships. And I, I will, we'll, we'll just start with the, with the. Typical trajectory. How, how does does purity culture show up and impact men in dating relationships?
Julia: Yeah, [00:26:00] something that I say on almost every podcast is that one of the biggest double binds or mind fucks that men experience in evangelical and other Christian cultures is that they are They're sexual aggressors, and that is the way that God made them, and they are supposed to, they should lean into that, and at the same time, that is part of their evil base nature, and they have to fight it.
Mm hmm. That is. An impossible, impossible place to live to be told that you've got to lean in and embrace this, but that also this is the most debased part of who you are and that shows up in a myriad of contexts.
Katherine: Do you feel like. Men tend to migrate towards one or the [00:27:00] other because of that double bind.
Julia: That's a good question. Good question. I would say that I've noticed men...
Jeremiah: I have a
Julia: way of answering that. I've got an idea, but you go first because I'm still formulating it.
Jeremiah: I would say that... Men who are interested in men who are interested in kind of reinforcing the gender hierarchies tend to lean more into kind of the Kind of the ownership of sexuality and, and then also the conflict in that, that, that can come from from
advocating for that. I would say that men who want more egalitarian relationships. Especially in, in opposite sex context. I think that those are men who tend to struggle with that that the double bind Julia, that you're referring to a little bit [00:28:00] more and as a result 10, those relationships tend to have a little bit more avoidance to them.
That's anecdotal. I don't know if that, I don't have any research to support that. I would
Julia: say my anecdotal experience is mostly similar and I really appreciate the theme of this episode because I, I work with a lot of couples, but I also, for probably lots of different reasons, have many individual male clients between the ages of like 25 to 37.
So we talk about this. a lot. And the really challenging part is that the gender binaries that we've described means that the misogyny reinforces the, or the, sorry, the the misandry towards men that they are sexual monsters that reinforces the misogyny and the sexism. And [00:29:00] then the misogyny continues to perpetuate this patriarchal pattern.
Which is such an awful systemic issue. Yeah. Yeah. And so often the misandry and the misogyny are just like fucking having this orgasm together. Sadly. What
Jeremiah: is the image of the orgasm? Like
Katherine: they're feeding each other. Yeah. Satisfying
Julia: each other. Right, and so I absolutely want to keep on the topic that you're describing, and I've been reflecting quite a bit on like specific impacts for men, and I think we have to still acknowledge at the beginning that all of the negative consequences towards men Still continue to hurt the entire relational structure and still continue to [00:30:00] prop up the, the sexist and misogynist norms of the patriarchy.
Jeremiah: Can I give an example about that that doesn't involve sex? Sure, yeah, yeah. So, I'm seven and Enneagram? No, no, no. Age 7. Enneagram 3. Oh,
Katherine: okay. Oh, oh, sorry. You're about to tell a story. Yes. Started when you were 7.
Jeremiah: Yes, yes. So, I'm 7 years old.
Julia: I knew where that was going, but it was confusing.
Jeremiah: I'm 7 years old.
And I am at a part of of a Bible study that a few of my families do on Wednesday nights, because heaven forbid, we don't have some sort of a church service two to three times a week. And at this particular group from time to time, I would be I would be the only boy that was there, only penis owner that was there.
So my dad had to work or that was at least his excuse for, for not showing up. [00:31:00] I made a similar excuse. So some of the other men had to, had to work. So it was the mom's wives all the kids were little girls and me. And so at seven, I remember the women in the church and this group saying, it's a devotional time at Jeremiah because you're the boy you have to lead the songs.
Okay. So little seven year old me like leads a song. Can you do an example of your accent? Oh, so I grew up in Texas. I had a. Thick southern accents, very flat vowels. My name had three syllables on it. Sometimes it had two syllables, Jerma. But, then they say, okay, well, you have to leave the scripture.
You have to lead the prayer. And, you know, I know that I am not the only boy who has been in that [00:32:00] experience who learned early on that, that men and women look to boys to provide quote leadership and running shit. And that's something that is still to this day, something that. I, I make the assumption that people will look to me.
Men and women will look to me to run things. I step into leadership roles and, and a lot of my healing work has been giving myself permission to, to, to step out of that. And, and, and I'm good at it. I, I think that I have I enjoy being in control more than I think sometimes I would like to admit, I've also taught you and I've both actually taught Julia with plenty of men who have had similar experiences and don't want any part of that.
Yeah. Right. And, and play those roles both out of a sense of obligation to the system and also do so in a way that's antithetical to their own personality traits and to their preferences. They'd much rather play a more passive role, just kind of sit [00:33:00] back, kind of watch the world kind of do its thing.
And, and, and they don't know what to do. We actually had an interview quite recently on our podcast with, with a couple of men actually for, for whom that was true. So yeah, so, so the expectation then that men are not just like sexual monsters or sexual initiators, but are initiators of any kind of process with, with the exception of domestic administrative processes, which is a whole other conversation we can get into in a bit.
Except for cooking and cleaning. Yeah, right. And mending the stockings. Right, right. But yeah, that's, that's, that's a lot of pressure. That is a lot of pressure. That, that men get put on and it also, it also discourages men from moving into collaborative spaces. Hmm. This is something you and I actually
Katherine: May I, may I pause here for just one [00:34:00] moment because one of the things that I have noticed in this, in the space that I work in the spiritual abuse realm.
Is that same thing we were talking about a podcast earlier, talking on our interview earlier about art and being ingrained with this mistrust of art. I also believe men get ingrained with this mistrust of women and how I, my work is predominantly women coming to me one because women are. You know, it's more acceptable for women to look for help and to want to collaborate one.
And then two, it's a woman run organization, like we have one male board member, but other than that, like, it is run by women, and they're not going to migrate. And I know this because I watched them migrate to the Wade Mullins and the other male leaders and and not migrate to the women, because it's still just [00:35:00] ingrained into.
The physique. Yeah,
Jeremiah: I actually think that Catherine that that's another double bind is that I agree with you that men that that this system that we're talking about you know, where Men are expected to be in leadership positions. Women from time to time reinforce that. And there's also plenty of women that are like, Hey, no, this doesn't work for me.
And then figuring out how to navigate those differences. I think that that's right, that that there are a lot of men who mistrust women and simultaneously. I don't think that men really trust men any better either. And I think that this is actually true, Julie, with what you're talking about with your, your clients.
Men are much more likely to seek an individual female sex therapist for individual therapy than they are to seek an individual male for individual therapy.
Julia: Really? Absolutely. But, but I want to qualify something that you said. I think you said that [00:36:00] men are equally less likely to trust other men. I would say men.
might be unwilling to trust men when it comes to kind of emotional issues because men are far more likely to trust men in more stereotypical leadership positions. But in terms of like the caretaking therapy to some degree has a caretaking element to it. And so I think that men Are uncomfortable talking about sex in general.
Many people are. That's not a misandrist comment. And I think it can be easier for individual men to talk to a woman about sex than a man. I don't know if seeking a female therapist for couples or family therapy is as oriented. Not for couples and family therapy. But I think that. They're going to go
Katherine: to a man.
Julia: Right. Because, because, because of what you're describing, Catherine, around like trusting men in these [00:37:00] forward facing leadership positions in a family or couples therapy is more forward facing, so men are more quote unquote reliable. But if it's an individual context in which. There's the assumption that emotional nurture might be more a part of it.
I think that men could be more prone to seeking a woman, just to seek a woman. But all of this goes back to Catherine, exactly what you're describing around men needing to be in over leadership positions. And Jeremiah, you use the word passive growing up in my community. Passive was used as derogatory.
Yeah. And that a passive man was not a man. Right. So books like Wild at Heart and pour into my community every man Battle to fight, beauty to save. Yeah. Yeah. Every everyman's battle was popular in my community and it was all about, [00:38:00] men being assertive at best, aggressive, dominant, violent at worst, and I'm even thinking about, like, my dad, and my dad is not a particularly dominant person.
If my parents were out of their religious system, I would probably ask my dad what that was like because I wonder if it was really hard to be in a system in which you were told that you had to be so overtly dominant when that wasn't part of your nature.
Katherine: Yeah, I'm thinking about the women that I met with.
That I referred to earlier and, and they just said how most of their relationships sort of defaulted into a functionally egalitarian relationship while they still espoused complimentary and they just [00:39:00] didn't tell anybody. I think
Julia: that's, I think that's how my parents marriage operates. And I think that's how
Jeremiah: my ex's parents.
Julia: Many relationships operate. Yeah.
Jeremiah: Oh, yeah. Hmm. That would be interesting to do research
Julia: on. Just a clarifying
Katherine: question about men seeking out a female sex therapist, more likely to seek out a female sex therapist. Is it possible that there's some shame? In that too of they're not going to talk to another man to admit that they struggle.
Yes.
Julia: I can give a great example. So I had a male client and I've had several iterations of this. And he came to therapy seeking help for quote unquote, erectile dysfunction. Diagnostic language around sexual health is so damaging to men and women. So I would never use that language of erectile dysfunction, but that was his language to me.
That's why I'm using it. what I would say is that [00:40:00] sexuality had some challenges for him. And one of those challenges was having the erections that he wanted to have. So we tried to get away from diagnostic language as much as possible, but. He told me that it would be one of the most shaming things possible to have a conversation with another male about about sexual health in general, particularly because men learn in and outside of religious structures that part of sexual dominance is having a specific type of erection in a specific kind of way.
And that is not how erections work for many, if not all people. We could have a whole con, a whole longer conversation about erections and what men learn about their penises and what they learn about erections. It might be even worthwhile later in our conversation, but [00:41:00] over time, I really encouraged this client to talk to some of his male friends about sexuality and what was working and not working for him.
And one day he came into therapy and he was like, Julia. I had a conversation with one of my male friends about sex, and it was one of the most meaningful conversations that I've ever had. And If more men talked with each other about sexuality in non toxic, dominant ways, I believe that would be massively healing towards humanity in general, regardless of gender.
If the shame was stopping him.
Katherine: Yeah, and I just think about how... So much of the sexual conversations for men was accountability oriented and like, how are you guarding your eyes? And how are you guarding your heart? And, you know, you know, documenting how often you masturbate and all of these like [00:42:00] very shaming?
So I can see that being so just so damaging for it
Julia: is. And it's so it can I say one other thing about this. It's really interesting because in another conversation, the three of us talked about how the church is not as counter cultural as they think they are.
But one of the main themes is this idea of like, You. In these cases, like, the humanity of women being fairly non existent, so in secular world, that means you just keep track of how many women you have sex with, and like, they are a number to you, and you want to get as high as possible, and then Catherine, what you're describing, when men are told to, you know, document how time, how many times they masturbate and then confess to another man and like not look at another woman.
It's still like this idea of like women being objects. We had a conversation several podcasts [00:43:00] ago with our friends. Sarah and... Jake. Yeah. And, and Jake was describing about, you know, going to Six Flags as a youth group. And it's like, there's gonna be a lot of boobs out there.
They wouldn't have said it that way. And it's like, just avoid the boobs. Like, and, and without any conversation that these are 13 to 16 year old girls. They are not walk Sets of boobs. Yeah. But whether they're children, right? Mm-Hmm. . And so, in and outside of these contexts, women are these vessels that you either have to conquer or avoid until you get married.
And you have to document how you're either like dominating or avoiding Mm-hmm. in this really restrictive version of what it means to be a man. And in either context. You are essentially a sexual monster who is either dominating and giving in to the, like, desires of the flesh, or you're working really hard to, like, fight your sin nature, and that makes you a good
Jeremiah: man.
And we have language for [00:44:00] this. Sex addict. Right. So so Joshua Grubbs is a researcher at Bowling Green and he has produced several articles about this that the majority of men who identify as sex addicts also have a high degree of religiosity. Oh and so the idea connected is absolutely so well, and it's, and it's connected back even to like to seven year old Jeremiah too, that, that, that, that the problem must be me.
I am a sexual monster as opposed to men coming together, talking together, Julia, like what you're saying. And talking about the fucked up positions that that, that the fucked up things that men learned about their bodies, the fucked up things that men learned about women's bodies and how we all want to, how we all want to do better in our own relationships, same sex relationships, opposite sex relationships, sexual relationships, non sexual [00:45:00] relationships.
Yeah. And
Katherine: maybe it's not a, and I feel like I've, I've approached it. What was brought into that in a little different perspective through the trauma lens of just like addiction itself, typically, or what we call addiction typically developed out of trauma and religiosity itself typically develops out of trauma and and having and having that you know, stuff ingrained into your mind. It's not like, and, and approaching it like a, a, where you like have all of these steps and you have all of these, you know, accountability things that you're supposed to do, but then you you're not addressing the stuff underneath it and the trauma that is,
Jeremiah: well, and I think that that's right.
And, and I think that. It's one thing to address that trauma in a professional context. I think it's a completely different thing to address that trauma in relationships with other people who've gone through a similar thing. [00:46:00] Yeah. And that's, from my perspective, that's why the relational perspective is so, it's so powerful.
Mm hmm. As the capacity to help, for the sake of our conversations, kind of men get out of some of these double binds and the shame that accompanies that double bind. Mm hmm. In, in, in more meaningful, kind of longer lasting ways. Right.
Julia: Right. And the language around. Addiction also focuses on behavior versus value.
So, so I will always ask clients, what does sex mean, if a person is talking about sex, if a person comes in and says that they are a sexual addict, I will ask what that means. And typically they might say, Well, I masturbate or I watch pornography. And so, so we'll talk, we'll be like, okay, so let's, let's put porn on the side.
Let's put masturbation on the side as a behavior. And let's talk about like what [00:47:00] the values are. I had a really interesting client, former client who was a seminarian. And and he Had reached out to me because he thought that I was a Christian sex therapist, and I explained, I said, I am not. I said, I actually am not a part of any religious communities, but I have an understanding of Christian culture so I work with a lot of folks in this area.
And I think it spoke to volumes of this client that he said, Okay, I'll work with you. with you because typically working with a secular therapist, that's like scary. And it was so interesting because he had a lot of shame around masturbation and he had a lot of shame around pornography. And we had this conversation and I said, okay.
Tell me about what your sexual values are without moralistic language and without behavior language. So he talked about sex being a form of connection, and he talked about sexuality being [00:48:00] sacred, and he talked about a few other values. And I said, that's so interesting. I said, huh, I actually think almost all of the values that you have.
I hold two. And, and then it was the conversation around, okay, so if sex, whether it's with yourself or someone else, if it's a form of connection, like, What does that mean? How can you enact that? If sexuality on your own or with someone else is a sacred thing, like what does that mean? And I think a big piece of work for men in Christian communities is getting out of the behavior obsession, which isn't their fault.
And thinking about the value moving away from the quality of an erection, moving away from whether or not you masturbate and or watch pornography and moving about, like, what are the values that you have around your bodies about gender, about women, about men, and then like rethinking what sexuality can look like.
And
Jeremiah: we talk about this, [00:49:00] Julia, in our series on Sex Evangelicals The Sex Education We Wish We Had in which we talk about the sexual health principles or values from the work of Doug Brown Harvey around consent, non exploitation, conversation about contraceptions and STIs, honesty, shared values, and mutual pleasure.
I love it. Those are the values that we tend to start from. But also, Julia, your question, being able to ask, what are your values as well? Like that and
Katherine: being able to have an opportunity to develop your own values outside of that religious. I want to go back. I want to get into those five things that you just mentioned, but I want to go back and talk about bodies for a minute.
We mentioned that women's bodies were made objects and it's like you're walking instead of boobs like it was it was objectification. And that was how a woman's body was viewed and presented to [00:50:00] men. It was also how we we viewed our own race to kind of your own body is of just like cover up cover up cover up and that was literally cover up cover up cover up and then.
Here's how you use a tampon on your period. And like, that was literally it. And so for men, what are the messages about their bodies that they receive in these communities?
Jeremiah: Men are machines. And, and, and this is both within Christian context and in larger capitalist contexts that men are machines that men are, that all men think about is sex.
That sex is the number one most important thing and that that's what being a good man is about. And that men are meant to compete. Yeah. Mm. And, and compete with other men and also compete with women. Yeah. I, I would argue that ultimately misogyny is a A misappropriation of competition between men [00:51:00] and women as opposed to men taking that energy around some of the injustices that they experience and taking it back to like the larger political and social systems that put them into shit situations.
Yeah.
Julia: It's interesting, Jeremiah, because some of, I don't, I agree with everything that you said. some of what you said isn't necessarily inherent to bodies. Sure. It's about, you know, competition, for example, you use your bodies to compete, but that's more of a concept, I guess. And so I suppose, and I'd be curious.
To hear how the two of you experience this similarly or differently, there wasn't a lot said about the bodies of men in my communities. And when I work with couples, especially hetero couples, women have a lot to say about their bodies and what they learned about their bodies. Men have much less to say about their bodies, at least anecdotally.
And what they do say about their bodies does tend to [00:52:00] revolve around their penises. And I would say that's more from secular culture than religious culture. Although, as we've discussed, both of those things overlap. Actually I'm going to walk that back. The church doesn't talk about erections explicitly.
Implicitly, there's a lot about erections. So if you edit it, you can edit that how you will. But yes, women have a lot. About their bodies that they learn that they can communicate men don't learn as much about their bodies. I
Jeremiah: agree.
Katherine: Yeah, and it makes me think that like what women learn about their bodies is typically oriented around a man.
Or oriented around the reproductive system and having babies, men don't, don't quote unquote need their body for those things. Like they don't, they're conditioned. I don't need my body other than to protect.[00:53:00]
Yeah. Yeah. And, and I remember reading this like super toxic book and the fundamentalist world about why like women need to like submit to men because like women have more power to have Babies. And so if men don't have that power, then they're going to turn into an animal. So they need like the woman to like, keep them from turning into the monster.
Because the woman has this like special power and like birthing babies, very, very toxic book yet. That's it. That's kind of like it in a nutshell
Jeremiah: of and that's what that's that's also a Christian relationship literature in a nutshell. Yeah, I can think of like 13 other metaphors that describe like the very similar process that you were just describing Catherine,
Julia: right?
Well, in going back to the erection piece, and clearly that's on my mind a lot today. When men learn that all they want is [00:54:00] sex, they, the the When they're told that's all they want. Yes, yes, yes, yes. When they are told all they want is sex. Yes. Which, when often they don't that does have some implicit Implications for for the penis and for needing to be physiologically aroused right away.
And so sometimes other men will come in and talk about erectile dysfunction and I'll say, Oh, so you didn't get an erection in 30 seconds of making out or so you had sex with a partner for a longer period of time. And at one point. You lost your erection. Like, where did you learn that that's erectile dysfunction?
Mm hmm. Actually, that's like very normative. Right. Functioning as a human being. But I will say that even though men don't learn as much about their bodies inherently, the implications about their bodies to [00:55:00] sexuality are pretty strong. And revolve
Jeremiah: around the mythology around the penis. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Katherine: Whoa. So, what, what does a man do when they're no longer, like, The penis is not the only thing about them, like where, where does, where does the conversation go? How did they become like a full whole integrated human being? When their penis is no longer the center of their life. Well,
Jeremiah: and that gets back to what I was trying to explain a little bit earlier about.
I think the answer to that question is different. If a man is interested in reproducing complementarian gender hierarchical systems. I think men in those systems with with those needs have no idea what to do and have these existential crises, either over longer periods of time or in these like short term outbursts, types of [00:56:00] control behaviors.
I think men that want. And strive for a more egalitarian context and opposite sex partnerships may have a little bit of an easier time exploring different ways of you know, providing, providing touch engaging in pleasure that, that don't involve, that don't center around their penises. It can
Julia: come with some relief.
Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. I'm thinking about some couples that
Jeremiah: I've worked with. I've experienced that personally speaking.
Julia: Oh, so. Is that okay that I asked him? You're the interviewer. I'm just very curious. No, I am
Katherine: too. I was coming. I was coming right behind you.
Jeremiah: No, Julia. I think, I think that I think that that's one of the sources of freedom that I've experienced in our relationship too.
Like, like I I've shared with you some anxieties that I have around my penis and you've, you've said, Oh, well, that's silly. I don't think that most women don't think that I'm like, Oh, you're right. Oh, the research supports what you're saying. Also, like, I want a more collaborative relationship. I want to be a more collaborative person than, than I was in, in [00:57:00] my marriage.
And so, yeah, I think I've been, I think a sense of relief is, is absolutely correct. I've experienced a lot of that regarding regarding sexuality regarding a lot of elements of our relationship. Very
Katherine: cool. I'm such a great partner. You guys are
Jeremiah: the real MVP of this operation.
Katherine: Ah, I love, I love that. Segueing into some of your, your five, your five things.
And also because this was probably one of the first episodes I listened to from, From you all. And I learned a lot about it. The message of consent, which I never learned until like very, very recently within the past few years and, and have friends. Who were married very young, and are now, you know, divorced and exploring things outside of it and I am having to teach them about consent, because it [00:58:00] was never a part of their upbringing, either and like, No, actually what that man just did to you was, was not consent and like sending them the YouTube video about the tea and tea and consent, tea and consent and like, you are allowed to say, No, and they should be looking for an enthusiastic.
Yes. And, and how does that, I know how that like shows up for women and what, and the impact that that has on women, what is the impact that that has on men in sexuality? Well,
Jeremiah: first of all, consent is a relational process. Consent is a dialogue. And part of. The narratives of masculinity is that men by being the gender and opposite sex couples by being the gender that has a higher quote sex drive should also be the initiators and that [00:59:00] initiation is so if, if initiation is expected by men If initiation is accepted to be done by men, if there's an assumption that men have higher sex drives, that women don't have high sex drives like this is setting up a recipe for some really harmful sexual experiences both in terms of, of.
emotional damage that can happen through a lack of communication, lack of overt consent, and also through significant emotional, physical, psychological damage from men who overtly exploit that to abuse women. So I would, I, I, I would start there that I talked on the podcast about what happened when I in my sex therapy training, the first class that we took was around the, the six sexual health principles that I mentioned and, and, and about consent and my response leaving that was, oh, fuck, I [01:00:00] am 33 years old.
I have never had this conversation and I have been. engaged in a 14 year sexual relationship that has not been particularly dialogical. Yeah. And there's reasons for that that we can talk about maybe in another context, but, but, but part of that is rooted in these expectations that both my partner and I had that, or my ex and I had that, I am the one that has a higher sex drive that it should be initiating sex.
And, and, and my partner as, as a woman should be the recipient and, and, and even be even be asexual. And so according to that, I have conversations which is super, super damaging. And so I had, I came back. From a class. I talked with my ex about this. Hey, we need to talk. I am so sorry that we have been having these experiences.
I want to do this differently. I'd love to figure out a way to talk to you [01:01:00] about this and my ex, who is also like steeped up in, in much more of a similar experience religious experience to Julia growing up, growing up in the Baptist church than, than I was. Her response was, Oh, it's no big deal.
Thank you. Which threw me for a loop and looking back on this now, like recognizing how entrenched she still was. Yeah. In these expectations about what men do and what women do.
Katherine: And it was just normal, so normal for her. She had no concept or idea of anything else. That's right.
Julia: Yeah. That's bad. Well and I'm not saying bad in a that is not bad in a blaming way towards anyone.
That is a bad system for all of us to have learned from, you know, this is super sad. So I've had [01:02:00] experiences in which like men have abused me sexually in an exploitive way. And that is a really awful experience. And then I've had experiences, perhaps more similar to what you're describing, Jeremiah. In which the abuse of, or the the non consensual experience is not necessarily abusive.
Non consent can absolutely be abusive and I've experienced that. Or non consent can exist when a couple doesn't have relational tools to navigate consent. So I had a diagnosis of vaginismus and vulvodynia, which means essentially painful intercourse and the constriction of the vaginal muscles. Deeply connected to...
Evangelicalism so I'm hesitant to use that diagnostic language, but that was what I experienced, which means that sex was often painful. And when I got married my husband and I would sometimes have these sexual experiences that were very, very physically painful. And my ex husband, who is a good human being, saw that I [01:03:00] was in pain, and he had this terrible choice in which he could stop the sexual experience because he didn't want to see his partner in pain or be any part of inflicting that.
However, if he chose to stop the sexual experience, that would also communicate to me as the woman in this. situation that I was not desirable. And so sometimes he would initiate stopping the sexual experience. And I would sometimes say, no, no, no, keep going. Because for me, that was my only way of proving my worth as a human being.
And so I could also have the opportunity to say, yes, let's stop this experience and save myself from the pain. Or I could power through the pain. And so both of us were stuck in these really terrible dynamics, which the experience was not consensual, right? Right. Not consensual because I was clearly in a huge amount of physical distress and emotional distress.
[01:04:00] However, From my perspective, that wasn't an abusive, non consensual experience, and I think the assumption that non consent is always abusive keeps us from having these dialogues because there is so much shame associated with it.
Katherine: That's right. Right, right. And I think that was something that I learned from y'all's episode about just because it's non consensual doesn't equal marital rape.
And I think that that is a new, a new a new phrase. Phrase. Simple. Right. That we're, we're more acquainted with. And, and I, and I love, thank you so much for sharing your example, Julia, because It was like you both were consenting to play roles. So there was consent. You didn't necessarily, you didn't know there was anything different, you know, like, yeah, it wasn't that he, you were saying, no, I don't want this.
And then he was forcing [01:05:00] still, that's a very different dynamic. We both have these roles to play. And we're both just playing
Julia: and we're performing our genders and we didn't know that we could consent out of it. And sadly, I've had the experiences that you're describing in which a sexual experience was forced due to an abuse of power.
And, and that's a different, that's a different kind of experience. Both are painful, both are harmful. But I think we have to have more nuanced dialogue around consent.
Katherine: Absolutely. Yeah. And then, and then just, Oof. And then like your story, Jeremiah, of like recognizing that this had never happened, like, and it wasn't in an effort to, to dominate, it was in an effort to play the role that you were told.
Jeremiah: Right. Right. Yeah. Right. And, and, and just to kind of build on [01:06:00] that, that yeah, like our earliest sexual experiences with my ex, yeah. Were they almost all ended with panic attacks. With my ex wife having a panic attack, and, did you
Katherine: correlate it with what had just happened? Or did you think it was completely separate?
I had
Jeremiah: no idea what was going on. I didn't have the language for it. I just knew that there was a sexual experience for something I wanted, something I thought she wanted. And the panic attacks, obviously like shut down the experience. It, it it heightened my own desire to move into like protective spaces.
And, and so I learned that initiating conversations about sex that had the capacity to bring that that, that, that kind of pain. So, so not just on a, on a, on a physical level, Julia, what you're talking about, but on a dialogical level. Sure, sure. Both. Yeah. Yeah. So.
Katherine: If this is too much information, you're, I will cut it from the episode, but were, [01:07:00] was, were your first sexual experiences in marriage?
Jeremiah: Depends on what you mean by sexual experience. Let's,
Katherine: let's, let's play the, the
Jeremiah: marital relationship was my first experience with intercourse. Got
Julia: it. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. And Yeah. I think the question is relevant in the sense that that meant a following of purity culture rules because the church defines sexuality by vaginally penetrative intercourse.
I think that language is so harmful because it I think that eliminates any other kinds of sexual experiences that are, that are just as, as valid and
Jeremiah: just as enjoyable.
Katherine: Yeah. And, and building that connection and intimacy as you were, you were talking about earlier as [01:08:00] a way of just wrapping up the episode, we've talked a little bit about this and you have shared some really great insights into the healing processes.
That you have both been through and then also clients but what are some just like stepping stones and, and, and starting places for like men listening to this episode of just like how to integrate and be that whole human. And then for women who might be in that hetero cisgender relationship on on what they can like how to just kind of navigate.
Potentially very brand new things that they may have learned in this episode. We can start with the men.
Jeremiah: I'm also thinking about stepping stones. I think first things first, we have to start thinking about sex in ways that go beyond vaginal intercourse. That sex is the way that the ways that two bodies interact with each other in a way that creates [01:09:00] some sort of, some sort of physical pleasure.
And thinking then about, well, what are the diversity of ways in, in, in, in which that happens for me what are the types of what are the types of touch that I like? Well, what are ways that I can have pleasure that, that, that don't involve touch and, and that can, that can either for myself and, and that are also relational so I think that.
Thinking about stepping stones, I think that that's an important stepping stone to acknowledge that sex is not a reduction to our penises that sex involves the totality of our bodies. Yeah.
Julia: I would say that learning to talk about... Sex is probably one of the stepping stones, and that's really difficult if you've never had any models for talking about sexuality. In our episode with you when we interviewed you for our podcast, you mentioned the [01:10:00] challenge of Well, how do you find a voice after leaving a religious community when you never developed one, right?
And so I recognize that even, I suppose, this stepping stone is a complicated one because that would require a person or a couple or a group to step up. to create a new roadmap or to start a new pathway down this sledding hill. Maybe having some questions could be helpful. So asking a partner or a friend or someone you trust who you believe could have this dialogue with you in a meaningful way to say, you know, what did you learn about your gender growing up.
What did it mean to be a man in your church? That might be a helpful first step, because it can also test out the water a little bit. Talking about what you learned is potentially vulnerable, but you're still [01:11:00] talking about something outside of yourself to a degree. And so being able to talk with someone about what that meant and what about that might've been difficult you know, to go there if, if, if the first part of that conversation goes well.
Yeah.
Katherine: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just getting, just getting comfortable with like just understanding the messages. Yeah. You received. Yes. It's hard though. It's hard work. Listen to sexvangelicals.
Julia: That's right. You can listen to our podcast.
Jeremiah: Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts,
Katherine: wherever you get your podcasts. Well, this has been very informative and also feels like the beginning of a conversation and there's just so much more to explore.
Just, yeah, through this lens, but I really appreciate you providing that extra perspective[01:12:00] just because. In the purity culture conversation, it tends to center around the woman's experience. And, and it, and as we know, patriarchy doesn't just impact women, it impacts everyone.
Julia: Right, right. And I think that one of the messages about purity culture is that women are the gatekeepers to sexuality.
And that's something that's damaging to women, but it damages men because it erases their ability to describe Their experiences in, in their own ways ,
Katherine: And, and almost eliminates their agency
Julia: within it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Of course.
Katherine: Yeah. Well, this has been great. As we, as we wrap up , share where folks can interact with you.
And then are you, are you all taking. Taking clients or do we have a full docket at the moment?
Julia: They can reach out
Jeremiah: to us and reach out to us. Yeah. So for more information about working with us, we're in, in the early stages of getting some coaching processes together.[01:13:00] Sex evangelicals at gmail.
com. We're also on Instagram and threads at sex evangelicals. And then we also have a subsect that goes out two or three times a week called relationship 101, which you can find at sex evangelicals. subsect. com. That's super
Katherine: easy and super simple. I love it.
Appreciate y'all.